This marvellous evocation of Noirmont was written by Siobhan Fogarty. We are always pleased to receive poems, short stories, images, photos paintings inspired by Jersey’s countryside.
Noirmont
Dappled sunlight falling through the trees
Onto soft earth and pine needles,
Daffodil spears piercing the ground cover,
Maybe a week until their golden trumpets
Blare forth assertive colour.
Onto the heath, the bracken
Rusted by winter cold,
Sage-green lichen misshaping bare twisted branches.
Wind scented buttery-coconut by gorse,
Tinged with salt.
I can hardly bear the brightness of
Grass and sky washed clean overnight
Over-saturated by morning sun
Water, shining diamond-like from blades of grass
Kept military-short by armies of rabbits.
Horse shoes carved into the turf,
I hear the soft thunder of galloping paws
And the dog runs past, leaping lamb-like
In sheer happiness at being alive, here, now.
The piglets in the next field squeal, outraged,
Tripping over mud, each other, themselves
To crowd around the patient mountain of their mother’s body.
Geometric, Bauhaus concrete fortifications,
Stark against the sky,
Left from the Occupation. After the war, the weapons
Were torn out, left the earth bleeding,
Thrown into the ocean
For water to envelop, rust, end.
Now, to keep the memory alive, they have been resurrected,
A cannon painted sky-grey,
Seemingly new, ready, waiting.
Let me come across these memories half-buried,
Emerging from the earth
Softened by time and overgrown by brambles.
Out on the headland, the German gun
Looks like nothing but what it is,
Slender death, pointed accusingly over the water
My eyes follow the silver sunlit path over the sea
And can see no further than the horizon.
By Siobhan Fogarty
